


Reluctant Hospitality

by briony8969



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Canon, Romantic Comedy, Some Plot, Some slight drama but nothing too upsetting don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-06-30 11:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19852018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briony8969/pseuds/briony8969
Summary: Anathema Device comes to stay at Aziraphale's book shop after breaking up with Newt. She doesn't know that Aziraphale and Crowley are romantically involved, and Aziraphale attempts to keep it that way. Everything goes very badly.





	1. Book Girl and Computer Man

Anathema Device shouldered her way through crowds of Soho natives and tourists, struggling to walk her bicycle against the press of hundreds of stylish Londoners. She kept glancing down at the small note in her hand, an address scratched in very precise but somewhat messy handwriting, to remind herself where she was going. Her backpack, weighed down with every single personal belonging she had dragged to the UK two years ago, plus all of her purchases at Jasmine Cottage, made her shoulders ache and lower back sweat. Finally, she saw the storefront. It was bigger than she thought it would be, deep red paint flaking off of the doorframe, with vivid gold letters reading “A.Z. Fell & Co.” She leaned her bicycle against a stand, whispered a quick hex which would make anyone who tried to steal it feel as though they were being attacked by fire ants, and approached the entrance.

Aziraphale, who, as the owner and sole employee of the bookshop could do pretty much as he liked, reclined in a comfortable red leather chair in the back of the room. He was deeply absorbed in one of his books and hoped very much that no one would try to buy it. Crowley had recommended it a few weeks ago, in a half-hearted attempt to jolt the angel into the 20th century. It was called The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. Crowley thought Aziraphale might like it because it was about a rare books dealer. The bits about the books were quite interesting, Aziraphale thought, but he found the protagonist to be a bit of a cad. He tut-tutted as he sipped his tea, only looking up when the intrusive dinging of the bell above the entrance announced the arrival of a customer. Customers always posed a bit of a moral threat to Aziraphale, as his desire to treat every human being with heavenly kindness fought in direct opposition against his deep seated reluctance to part with any books.

“Good morning!” He announced (it was, in fact, well into the afternoon.) “I…” he paused upon recognizing the woman at the door. “Oh! It’s you, then?” He struggled to think of her name, having thought of Anathema for the past few years as the woman with the very expensive looking jacket whose bike he had healed and whose book he had stolen. 

Anathema did not respond right away, too distracted by the climbing walls of mohogany shelves, the books piled haphazardly on any flat surface, and the dry smell of old paper well cared for. 

“Wow!” She managed to say.

“Thank you.” Aziraphale smiled with a touch of pride. “Are you here to… make a purchase?” He eyed the lovely young woman’s very large backpack and haggard appearance. Her sweat had made one side of her hair frizz noticeably, and her shoes, he saw with a bit of concern, did not match.

“No! Um, I mean, possibly.” She swung her bag down to the floor and took in a few deep breaths. “Fell isn’t your real name, is it? I’ve been trying to put all that together.”

“I, erm.” Aziraphale didn’t like to lie, but he also didn’t have a good idea how much this young woman knew about him. Everything had been so frenzied and chaotic at the end of days that he couldn’t really remember who all had been where at what time. 

“Its just that Fell seems like kind of a weird name for an angel. Considering that you never did. Fall, I mean.” Anathema said. 

“Oh! Right.” Aziraphale answered with a nervous laugh. So she knew that! That was pretty significant! “Yes, my true name is Aziraphale. And if you don’t mind refreshing my memory on yours?”

“Anathema. Anathema Device.” She held out her hand, which Aziraphale politely shook. “You gave me your address at the air base, I was worried you’d forgotten.” 

As she mentioned it Aziraphale half remembered handing her a quickly scribbled note, still shaking from the encounter with the devil and palm still warm from wielding a flaming sword. He couldn’t remember for the life of him why he’d done it. It seemed like the polite thing to do at the time.

“Ah yes!” He said. “Well, you’ve found me.” He smiled, trying not to look as confused as he felt about what had brought her here. 

“I, um, I split up with Newt.” She said. Her voice came out calm and clear, not all shaky or tearful as she’d worried it would sound the first time she said it out loud. Her tone was as calm and normal as though she’d just said, “My bicycle is outside.” 

Aziraphale nodded with a deep sympathy, which, to his credit, succesfully hid that he had no idea who or what “Newt” was. 

“I was hoping I could stay with you for a while.” Anathema finally said, looking at Aziraphale searchingly. “Just until I figure out what to do with myself.”

Every fiber of Aziraphale’s being urged him to say no. And if Anathema had continued to stand there, looking slightly lopsided but largely fine, keeping a stoic face against the world’s turmoils, he might have been able to work up the nerve to actually do it. But her facade flickered for a moment, just a moment, and Aziraphale could see the pain and exhaustion behind her eyes. 

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She finished. Her voice didn’t crack this time either, but her tone was delicate. Fragile.

“Of course you can stay here.” Aziraphale cooed, taking Anathema’s hand and patting it encouragingly. “I have a guest room upstairs.” 

Aziraphale, did, actually, have a guest room upstairs, which he offered whenever he thought it might be helpful to a person in need. Most of the time the person in question assumed he was some kind of serial killer and made a speedy exit. One memorable occasion a woman had actually called the police and he’d had to make a run for it. But on the rare instances when someone needed his help and he was able to offer it, he always felt like he had done a bit of good.

~*~

Crowley, dressed in a pair of unreasonably tight black trousers and an extremely expensive and ridiculous jacket, sort of skipped up the last few steps of the bookshop’s private rear entrance. If he weren’t a demon and therefore much too cool to do anything of the sort, he would have whistled a cheerful tune.

As soon as he slithered indoors he attempted to move as silently as possible. Last night when he’d returned to the shop after a long day of being a roustabout, he’d found Aziraphale nodded off in his red chair, book in his lap, with the door to the store wide open. The shop just sat there, open, unwatched, waiting for any delinquent off the street to sneak in and fill their pockets with historical miniature editions of Dante’s Inferno worth more a personal yacht. He tip-toed (in a very cool way) around to the entrance of the store, where he saw his angel sitting quietly in the same red seat. Crowley wickedly crept up behind, choosing not to breathe for maximimum stealth.

At the last moment, inches from Aziraphale’s ear, Crowley shouted,

“OY!” 

Aziraphale yelped and skittered up like a startled cat.

“Oh! You bas-, erm, bad… person!” He said, trying to recover as Crowley cackled. “I wasn’t even asleep! I was sitting here waiting for you!” Aziraphale grumpily pointed over to the door, which he had dutifully locked at closing time. “See?!”

“Aww, well done, babe.” Crowley, in the same manner as he had done for over a year now, leaned forward to give his angel a kiss. 

“Is everything all right?” A woman’s voice, speaking with an American accent, called from upstairs. “Is someone there?”

Aziraphale jumped backwards from his partner as Crowley glanced up in confusion.

“We aren’t alone!” Aziraphale hissed in a low tone. “EVERYTHING’S FINE! ANATHEMA!” He shouted upstairs. “Nothing to worry about!” 

“Who? What?” Crowley gave Aziraphale a questioning look as he scrambled to put his sunglasses back on. Aziraphale just shrugged with an expression of helpless anxiety. 

Anathema, dressed in what could only be described as a psychadelic loungewear ensemble, descended the stairs, carrying a very slim and impressive laptop.

“Oh! Crowley!” She said, spotting the confused looking demon. “I didn’t realize you two still spent time together! Don’t the other angels and demons get upset about it?” 

“Who the fuck are you?” Crowley asked, still trying to piece together what was going on.

“Sorry!” Anathema stepped forward, holding out a hand in greeting. “Anathema Device. You hit me with your car once, while traveling at a very high speed.” 

Crowley stared at the lovely, dark, bespectacled face for a few moments trying to place it. 

“Bicycle girl? The girl with the book?” He asked, shaking her hand

“She has a name, you know.” Aziraphale said, haughtily. “She was at the air base. During, the er, Armageddon.” Aziraphale said. “She’s staying with me for a few days!” 

“How did you know I was a demon?” Crowley asked narrowing his snake eyes behind his sunglasses.

“Oh! Um, I noticed that you spoke directly to Beelzebub.” Anathema said. “It wasn’t, I mean it wasn’t particularly hard to piece together.” She turned her attention to Aziraphale in a brisk, professional fashion. “Sorry to bother you, but can I ask for the wifi password?”

“Oh! Of course.” Aziraphale smiled and awkwardly took her laptop. Crowley tilted his head, interested to see what Aziraphale’s wifi password could possibly be. The angel leaned foward and blew on the screen. The computer chimed an angelic chord and logged in. Anathema’s eyes widened in wonder as she took her computer back. 

“Holy crap.” She said. “You fixed all the viruses!” Anathema’s interests, which delved into the occult and aligned with conspiracy theorists and Alex Jones types with worrying frequency, led to an absolutely massive amount of spamware on her laptop. 

Crowley shook his head at Aziraphale in disbelief, who looked a little bit abashed. Anathema glanced up.

“Thank you again for letting me stay. I’m glad you two are still in touch. You know, it’s kind of funny, that first night when you dropped me off at Jasmine Cottage, I thought that you were, like, a couple!” She laughed out loud. “I thought you were book stealing gay bicycle repairmen! Isn’t that wild?” She continued to chortle to herself as she made her way back upstairs, leaving behind a confused, slightly irritated, very much romantically involved angel and demon. 

~*~TWO YEARS PREVIOUSLY. THE NIGHT OF THE APOCALYPSE. ~*~

Aziraphale, wringing his plump hands in the middle of Crowley’s apartment, fit in with his surroundings about as well as Queen Elizabeth sitting in the audience of a NASCAR race. 

“it’s very, er, nice.” He said politely, glancing at the extremely chic, sleek, and black furnishings.

“Thank you! Elon Musk asked me about my interior designer.” Crowley said, wiping a speck of dust off the edge of an ice cold marble table. It was the kind with corners so sharp anyone without demonic reflexes would find themselves covered in bruises from bumping into it. 

“It looks like…” Aziraphale floundered for a moment. “It looks as though you live in a very expensive dungeon.” 

“Ooh! That was a bit mean wasn’t it!?” Crowley teased, clearly unoffended. “I HAVE been a bad influence on you!” 

Aziraphale gave Crowley a small smile, pleased that he hadn’t blurted out anything accidentally hurtful, when over Crowley’s shoulder he saw a large and extremely lush collection of indoor plants. His face lit up.

“Are those your houseplants!? I always thought you were just making those up!” Aziraphale asked, going to examine them. As he gently reached out to touch a waxy and deep green leaf, however, he felt a kind of chill. “Good lord!” Aziraphale shuddered in the plant’s presence, “Are they… are they all right!?” 

“Don’t worry about them, angel.” Crowley placed his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders and very tenderly steered him away from the plants and towards the kitchen. “Care for some wine?” 

The two of them sat next to one another in what could only be described as the most ominous breakfast nook in central London, sipping large glasses of very good red wine. Sitting down, for some reason, made all of the tension they had just lived through feel more real. Crowley’s whole body ached, threatening to fall apart in place of the car he had so stubbornly held together. Aziraphale flinched at the sound of any traffic outside, still feeling as though the earth were buckling under his feet as it had at the Tadfield airforce base. Noticing the angel’s discomfort, Crowley snapped his fingers and made his apartment completely soundproof. Aziraphale, distracted, didn’t notice, or he would certainly have thanked him. In the end he was the first to break the silence.

“Do you not own a cutting board?” He asked, glancing around the black granite kitchen, searching for any trace of wood. 

“Why would I need one? I don’t cook.” Crowley answered, in a short tone.

“It’s just, I couldn’t help but notice, you have about 300 kitchen knives.” Aziraphale gestured to the magnetic strip on the wall attached to the black backsplash. The strip trembled, weighed down by a truly unnecessary amount of sharpened metal. 

“I’m a demon! I have a weakness for knives! Sue me!” 

“Yes, but kitchen knives? Without a cutting board?” Aziraphale tried to keep his expression neutral but the smile kept creeping up on him. “I feel as though there’s a lesson in there somewhere, I’m just trying to pin down what it is.” 

“What… are you writing a parable? We just met the 11-year-old bloody antichrist and you’re going to write a parable about my kitchen?” Crowley asked indignantly. 

“The Demon’s Folly! That’s what I’ll call it.” Aziraphale grinned.

Crowley snatched the wine bottle off of the counter and shook his head in disapproval, as Aziraphale giggled at his own joke. Eventually, though, the silence crept back, and Aziraphale found himself yawning. 

“Tired?” Crowley asked. 

“You know I rarely sleep.” Aziraphale said, rubbing his eye like a 3 year old fighting off naptime. “Although I know how fond you are of it.” 

“You haven’t seen the bedroom, yet, have you?” Crowley asked, voice soft. 

Aziraphale’s large, expressive eyes met Crowley’s. Without breathing, he shook his head no. 

“Come on, then.” Crowley said, sauntering up and gesturing for Aziraphale to follow. The ruse (was it a ruse?) that somehow the only reason Aziraphale was going to Crowley’s bedroom was as part of some bizarre late night apartment tour was simultaniously insufferable and the only reason Aziraphale could force his feet to take each step. Crowley’s swagger ahead of him seemed slightly diminished from its usual off-balance confidence.

Crowley opened the door to the bedroom and flicked on the lightswitch in a smooth motion.

“My… stars.” Aziraphale’s jaw actually dropped. The sight of Crowley’s bedroom was too spectacular to ignore. The vast expanse of the bed, it had to be larger than a California King, was draped in feathery soft black sheets that absorbed all light, as though you were staring directly into the abyss. Mountains of plush, silk, and satin throw pillows in shades of blood red and tasteful greys floated on the bedspread like lilies on a pond. 

“The thread count is as close to infinite as I could manage without ripping a hole in spacetime.” Crowley whispered, leaning close to his friend’s ear. 

It was all too much for Aziraphale. Within the past 24 hours he had been torn out of one physical form, possessed another, had another physical form ripped into existence out of nothingness. He was more and more confident that he was going to be executed the next day, and he was at this very moment standing in his best friend’s bedroom for the first time in the entirety of his existence. He turned to face Crowley.

“Crowley, I need you to tell me something, and I’m going to ask that you be perfectly straightforward with me.” 

“All right?” Crowley took a step back, a bit concerned.

“When you invited me to your apartment, did you do so with the intention of…” Aziraphale very nearly said the word fuck for the second time in as many days, but lost his nerve at the last second, “…making love… to me?” 

Crowley’s snake eyes widened. 

“I did ask you to be honest.” Aziraphale reminded him.

“Intention… would be the wrong word.” Crowley croaked. He took a deep breath before he continued. “I invited you over because your bookshop burned down and I thought you needed a place to stay. And…” He met the intense gaze of his friend, the one other fixture in the world who was always there for him, who barely changed, who was so clever and sweet and good. Aziraphale, to him, had always been a beacon of light in an existence where literally everything around him turned to grime and ash and bloat. “And I hoped deep down that you might consider… being with me.” He said, voice so soft it was though his body was trying to prevent him from saying it out loud at all.

Aziraphale’s expression melted into one of such tender care that Crowley had to look away. He braced himself for the inevitable rejection, the rejection which he had cleverly postponed for 6,000 years by never saying anything truly important out loud. 

“Dear boy,” Aziraphale whispered, taking Crowley’s hands into his. “My dear boy.” He leaned forward and gently kissed Crowley’s cheek. Crowley turned his face slightly, hardening it into a smile.

“That’s a bit forward, isn’t it angel?” He teased. He was going to follow up with a joke to defuse the whole situation but Aziraphale cut him off by kissing him directly on the lips.

For a moment, the culmination of centuries of repressed emotion expressed in one physical act was too overwhelming to process and Crowley stood perfectly still. Aziraphale, too strung out on the absolute thrill of doing what he’d imagined doing for nearly a century (longer, if he let himself think about it) carried on bravely. He parted his lips slightly, and Crowley recovered himself enough to deepen the kiss, cupping the sides of Aziraphale’s face and allowing himself to kiss back with purpose.

Aziraphale let out a little subconscious moan, which Crowley found so unbelievably sweet that he couldn’t help but laugh. Aziraphale opened his mouth a bit more, and the two of them really began, beyond any of Crowley’s wildest dreams, to have at it. For two celestial beings who, between them, didn’t really always have the greatest grasp of their physical bodies, they made up for lack of experience with depth of emotion. When Crowley gasped aloud, however, Aziraphale found himself jumping back.

“No, sorry, I think that’s all, yes, erm, wow. All right.” He sputtered. 

“Sorry! sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry” Crowley apologized in a low desperate monotone, holding his hands in front of him like someone trying to calm a startled horse. 

“What are you apologizing for?” Aziraphale laughed, rubbing his forehead. “I kissed you!”

“Yes, but…” Crowley’s brow furrowed. “It’s my fault, surely?”

“Nobody’s at fault!” Aziraphale laughed, bright pink, looking nervous but content. “It’s just… that’s about all I can handle at the moment, it’s all been very trying…” Aziraphale tried to explain, blush deepening, eyes bright, clearly exhilarated.

“Of course! We can slow down!” Crowley said. “Or stop, whatever you want, angel.” 

“Not stop, never stop.” Aziraphale said, sighing slightly and giving Crowley a shy smile. “Just… pause?” He stepped forward and took Crowley into his arms, hugging him tight. 

Crowley, who couldn’t believe his luck, allowed himself to be held. 

“Will you stay with me tonight? Just to sleep?” Crowley asked, voice uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“Of course, my love.” Aziraphale replied. Tomorrow, there was much strategizing to be done. But that was tomorrow.

~*~PRESENT DAY.~*~

Crowley dragged Aziraphale out with him for a cheeky Nando’s (a phenomenon which he had not invented, but would certainly have taken credit for if he still answered to hell,) while Anathema shut herself off in her comfortable room back at the bookshop. They sat across from one another in a brightly patterned stylized booth.

“Yes, I understand that she and computer man…”

“Newt.” Aziraphale corrected, dipping a chip into some PERInaise with a grim expression.

“Computer Newt, they broke up. But why did she come here of all places?” Crowley asked.

“She had some questions about what happened at the end of times.” Aziraphale said, “And she was able to put together that I was the angel from the Nice and Accurate Prophecies.”

“Good old Agnes.” Crowley muttered. “Bit of a snitch, isn’t she?” He noticed that Aziraphale had got a little fleck of sauce on his cheek, and helpfully wiped it off with his thumb. 

“Oh! Thank you.” Aziraphale smiled lovingly at his partner. “Only if you know how to read her.” He answered. 

Crowley sat back in his seat with his arms folded, looking petulant. His order of spicy wings sat there dejected, rapidly growing cold. 

“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why you want us to keep this secret.” 

“This?” Aziraphale asked.

“Us.” Crowley answered. “Everyone in Soho knows we’re a couple.” 

It was true, A.Z. Fell and Anthony J Crowley had become fixtures of the Soho scene. They were constantly together, and bartenders and baristas at local bars and tea shops greeted them with smiles and waves. From time to time they even went out dancing together, although so far Aziraphale’s attempts to bring the gavotte back into fashion had been unsuccessful. 

“Dear boy!” Aziraphale whispered, “I’m not embarrassed about us!” He took Crowley’s hand and kissed it. A young clerk standing behind the counter gave them a bit of a side-eye, and Aziraphale waved his hand at her, magically reminding her all at once of every embarrassing thing she’d ever done in her life. She flushed crimson and escaped into the kitchens to recover herself. 

“It’s just that,” Aziraphale continued, “she already knows more about us being an angel and a demon than I would strictly like. I’d like to get to know her a bit better before she finds out, you know, everything.” It was mostly true.

Crowley didn’t look entirely convinced, but he gave Aziraphale a little nod. 

“How long do you think she’ll be here?” He asked.

“Oh she’s a young, lively girl. I’m sure she’s already bored of my stuffy old bookshop. She’s probably typing away on her laptop now, looking for sky bed and breakfasts.”

“Airbnb’s.” Crowley corrected. 

“Right! I’ll be stunned if she’s here tomorrow.” 

~*~ BACK AT THE BOOKSHOP~*~

Anathema Device lay on Aziraphale’s supernaturally comfortable guest bed staring at the ceiling. Her laptop, which she had used for a few minutes to check her email (none from Newt, if he tried to send an email it would probably arrive as a package) sat closed and cool. She had been like this for about an hour. A few tears rolled down her temples, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to wipe them, instead feeling them grow cold on her face before they dropped to the pillow by her ears, leaving damp marks.

“Fuck.” She whispered, closing her eyes and taking a shaky breath. “Fuck. Everything.”


	2. Namaste, witches.

~*~THREE WEEKS LATER~*~

Crowley lay flat on his back on the cold, concrete floor of his apartment with his legs propped up on the couch. The only reason his smart home speakers weren’t playing mopey music was because he couldn’t be arsed to think of a playlist. He grimly sprayed water out of his plant spray bottle into the air and let it drift down around him.

Anathema had not yet left the bookshop. From what he could tell in his nightly phone calls to Aziraphale, she spent her days mostly shut up in her room, only sometimes venturing out to look at books. Whenever she and Aziraphale did cross paths, she asked him a lot of questions about what it was like to be an Angel that made him self-conscious. Crowley and Aziraphale had not been able to met up in person since the evening at Nando’s, and Crowley was beginning to wonder if they were going to have to set up a surreptitious duck feeding at St. James’s park, like the bad old days. 

His phone rang, so close to his ear that he jolted and slammed his head into the ground.

“‘Ziraphel?” He mumbled, barely managing to click the right button to answer the phone.

“I stole her bike.” Aziraphale whispered.

“You… what?” Crowley sat up, rubbing the back of his head and rolling his neck.

“She’s at the police station right now. I needed to get her out of the house. I’m going mad.”

“You really ought to have left her the bike so that she could, you know, use it to ride away on.” Crowley suggested.

“Crowley will you just come over please?” Aziraphale asked, voice doing that lovely high pitched thing it did when he was feeling a bit frantic. 

“Be there in a minute.” Crowley hung up. For a moment he considered zapping through the phone lines to save time, but in the end decided against it. It really left you buzzing, after changing your corporeality like that, and as much as he wanted to see Aziraphale things weren’t quite that dire.

Ten minutes later Crowley strode into the bookshop to find Aziraphale pacing in the back room, gnawing on his cuticles.

“Petty thievery! That’s a new one!” Crowley teased.

“Oh, DO just be nice to me for a moment.” Aziraphale pouted. “I don’t know how to get her to leave!” 

Crowley gave an apologetic smile and gestured for Aziraphale to come closer. Aziraphale obediently stepped into a hug.

“Sorry, angel. It’s good to see you.” Crowley whispered, squeezing Aziraphale in tight. He’d used to dream of doing this all the time, and the fact that they just HUGGED now was life-changing. Aziraphale nuzzled into his shoulder, sweetly. Crowley found everything Aziraphale did sweet. Not in a gross saccharine way, just, sweet and kind. He wasn’t used to seeing a lot of that in his former work.

“I’m sorry.” Aziraphale said with a sigh. “This is stupid, I should be able to handle this.” 

Crowley shook his head. “You’re too nice, you just have to ask her to leave! Tell her you need your space!”

“If she was awful or something I’d be able to, but she’s been nothing but lovely.” Aziraphale said, looking annoyed. “She does all of her own dishes and leaves me kind little thank you notes all over the place. It’s horrible.”

A thought occurred to Crowley. He took a step back, narrowing his eyes.

“Did you ask me over here so I could be the mean one?”

“No! Of course not.” Aziraphale said, although he looked a little flustered. “I asked you over because I made a woman’s bicycle disappear and now I can’t remember what it looks like and I need to miracle her a new one. Also, I missed you.” 

Crowley smiled again. “How long’ve we got before she gets back?” he asked.

“40 minutes? Probably?” Aziraphale wasn’t exactly sure what Crowley was suggesting but he was 100% sure he was up for it.

“Good, we’ve got to sit down and plan this thing out.” Crowley pulled a chair out from Aziraphale’s Wooton desk and sat backwards on it like a “cool” professor. Aziraphale regretfully cast aside any alternative plans for those 40 minutes and joined him at the desk. 

~*~

After an extremely trying afternoon, spent jammed between dozens of other irritated people at a filthy police station, only to be told that hers was the 15th stolen article reported that day and last on the list of priorities, Anathema returned to Aziraphale’s bookshop in a foul mood. To her surprise she found Aziraphale and Crowley together in the kitchen, slicing vegetables for a salad. The tempting smell of a rich and buttery steak and kidney pie wafted throughout the entire flat.

“Hello again Mr. Crowley!” Anathema greeted.

“Just Crowley.” Both Aziraphale and Crowley said at the same time from their separate places in the kitchen.

“Just Crowley, sorry, and hello Aziraphale.”

“Any luck with your uh, velocipede?” Crowley asked with a smirk, glancing over at Aziraphale who gave him a little irritated smolder. 

“Ugh, no. I don’t know why I thought London cops would be any less useless than American cops.” Anathema sat down at the kitchen table with a huff.

“I’m so sorry, dear.” Aziraphale condoled, pouring her a glass of wine which she accepted with gratitude. “You never had to deal with the police at Tadfield?” 

Anathema nearly spilled her glass her of wine. Aziraphale had up to this point carefully avoided mentioning anything about her time in Tadfield, seeming to prefer to politely ignore the reason for her sudden homelessness. She took a deeper sip of wine than she had previously planned on.

“Never needed to.” She answered. “Tadfield’s pretty quiet. Probably because, you know, Adam likes it that way.”

“Is Newt still there?” Crowley asked, taking Aziraphale’s place opposite her with his own generously poured glass of wine. “In Tadfield?” 

Anathema’s eyes widened at the mention of her ex’s name. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She said, tone hard. Crowley glanced up at Aziraphale, who stood next to the sink helplessly holding a bowl of chopped lettuce.

“Oh, sod it.” Crowley muttered, and snapped in Anathema’s face. Instantly her eyes went blank and glassy and she stared straight ahead without expression,.

“No!” Aziraphale gasped. “No that was meant to be a last resort! We’re supposed to try to ease her into opening up over the meal by pleasant conversation and empathetic listening!”

“But, bear with me for a moment, what if I just had a better idea?” Crowley asked. “What if… I just knock her out and she tells us the truth about everything? Much quicker?”

Aziraphale made a face, but joined Crowley on the opposite side of the table from the hypnotized girl.

“Anathema, why did you decide to come to London?” He asked, careful to keep his tone gentle. 

“I wanted to meet the angel.” She replied. “And I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” 

“Oh! See, that’s exactly what she told me when she first came! Poor pet!” Aziraphale exclaimed, glancing fretfully at Crowley.

“Why don’t you just go home to your mother?” Crowley asked.

“Embarrassed.” Anathema answered. “Ashamed.” 

“Ashamed of what, my dear?” Aziraphale asked.

“I burned the book. The second book Agnes wrote for us. My mom spent her whole life taking care of the first one and I burned this one, I can’t tell her, and I can’t lie, so I stay away.” 

Aziraphale and Crowley raised their eyebrows at one another in shock. A second book! A SECOND Nice and Accurate Prophecies! That survived 400 years, in safe keeping, only to be burned by a witch and her failson boyfriend?

“Oh this is really quite upsetting.” Aziraphale, bibliophile of the ages, took a long draft of Sauvignon Blanc. Crowley rubbed his partner’s back gently in condolence.

“Why on earth did you burn it?” Crowley asked, as Aziraphale tried not to think about what kind of valuable information had just been lost.

“It was the right thing to do. Newt asked me if I wanted to be a professional descendant all my life. I don’t but…” she trailed off. She wasn’t supposed to trail off while hypnotized, she was supposed to answer all questions honestly. 

Crowley looked at Aziraphale.

“I don’t think she knows what she wants.” He whispered.

“Why did you and Newt break up?” Aziraphale asked. He’d been desperately curious but of course much too shy to ask.

“He’s too bossy for somebody that can’t do anything.” Anathema said. “We weren’t a good match.” 

“Oooh!” Crowley looked wickedly intrigued. Aziraphale gave him a disapproving look, but Crowley just shrugged.

“Now I feel even worse for her.” Aziraphale said. “I can’t ask her to leave, she’s a mess, poor thing. Imagine spending every day of your life following a very specific guideline of what you should do, and then suddenly to be cut loose.”

“I think I have a bit of an idea what that’s like.” Crowley said, tone flippant but soft. 

Aziraphale blinked at him a few times before he understood. Good Lord. He’d never really thought about what Falling must have been like. Even if Crowley had done it at more of a saunter. Aziraphale took his hand, heart breaking a little bit. 

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hand back before letting go and snapping his fingers for a second time in front of Anathema’s face. 

“Wait!” Aziraphale protested, but it was too late. Anathema came to, glancing around the room with slightly glassy eyes, disoriented.

“I stole your bike.” Crowley said.

Both Aziraphale and Anathema (Crowley had too few friends for more than one of them to reasonably have a four syllable name beginning with “A,” but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes) gaped at him in surprise. 

“Wh-Why?” Anathema asked.

“Oh it’s a demon thing.” Crowley made a scoffing noise. “Sometimes you just see a nice bike and think, ‘you know what? I’m gonna knick that!’ And before you know it you’ve gone ahead and knicked it.” 

“It’s really, erm, quite embarrassing.” Aziraphale said, blinking slowly and deliberately. “He’s always… stealing things.” Crowley couldn’t repress a small smile as he watched his partner struggle to invent a coherent lie. “I asked him to cook you dinner to make up for it.” Aziraphale scrambled to a finish.

“Yeah it was all Aziraphale’s idea. The dinner! That is! Not the thievery. An angel couldn’t even think of such a thing of course.” Crowley said. It was all Aziraphale could do not to kick him under the table. 

“Oh.” Anathema stared at the two men, feeling just as confused as she had felt the first night they met, when they ushered her into a large black Bentley and drove off into the darkness. “Can I have it back?” She asked.

“Absolutely!” Crowley assured her. “It might be a bit different, mind, demonic energies and everything, they can warp reality.” 

“I think I’ve got some incense that can help that, actually.” Anathema said, with an optimistic smile. Crowley nodded as seriously as he could manage at that, but locked eyes with Aziraphale in mutual bemused understanding.

“Now!” Aziraphale clapped his hands together in unfeigned excitement. “We can celebrate the return of your wayward footcycle with dinner!”

“I’m so thankful for the thought, but I should tell you I’m a vegan.” Anathema said, in what was, to her credit, a very apologetic tone.

“Of course you told me!” Aziraphale clapped again, and the buttery scent wafting throughout the flat shifted to the equally pleasant smell of crisping coconut oil pastry. The steak and the kidneys in the pie went through a startling chemical transformation into carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms. Crowley shook his head in absolute disbelief. Aziraphale avoided eye contact. “Let’s tuck in, shall we?” He said, and Anathema agreed with a warm smile.

~*~

Every night since her arrival at the bookshop, Anathema set her alarm to 7AM, with a determined intention of waking up early the next day to get some things done. Evening Anathema without exception proved to be more optimistic than morning Anathema, who always slammed the alarm off as soon as it rang in a groggy rage and fell grumpily back to sleep within seconds. For the next three hours Anathema would drift in and out of boring, anxiety inducing dreams. In one she would dream that she was getting ready for work, only to realize that she had been fired. In another people in a public place would all be mean to her and she wouldn’t be able to tell them off because she would lose her voice. Only when she literally could not take it any more would she allow consciousness to win and force herself up out of bed. 

A usual morning for Anathema involved dragging herself out of bed at 10:30, sneaking past Aziraphale (who may or may not have opened the bookshop at that point, she hadn’t quite figured out the hours yet) to grab a bowl of wheatabix from the kitchen, and retreating back into the bedroom to scroll through her cyber-witch/environmental activist blogs. The news would usually upset her to the point where taking a shower would feel pointless, and she’d spend another hour lying in bed staring at the ceiling, just soaking in her feelings. There never seemed to be a point to anything, and everyone in the world seemed to be small and wretched and cruel. 

The morning after Aziraphale and Crowley cooked her dinner, Anathema managed to drag herself out of bed after only one anxiety dream (in this one she was swept away by a current, a reoccurring dream she’d had since she was a child) and wash her face. She pulled on a very comfortable pleated skirt and black top, and stepped out of the bedroom to grab a bite of breakfast. To her surprise she found Aziraphale sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of tea and glancing through an 18th century bible. He pushed up his glasses and beamed at her in welcome as she crossed the threshold. 

“Anathema! My dear! I hope you slept well?”

“I, yes?” She answered, glancing over to the counter to see a fresh steaming kettle next to a decorative tea cup and a selection of tea leaves. Some tempting looking cranberry orange scones sat in a basket. 

“I was thinking, I might just keep the shop closed today, and you and I could find something exciting to do in London. Whatever you want. Something to make your visit here worthwhile.” Aziraphale suggested.

“Oh! But, won’t your customers be upset?” Anathema asked. Aziraphale didn’t even dignify that with reply, and continued to smile pleasantly in silence. Anathema wandered over to the counter and poured herself some tea, green tea Aziraphale noticed, making a point to stock up on that, and she joined him at the table, looking a touch discheveled. 

“Any ideas?” Aziraphale asked brightly. “Would you like to visit a museum? Go for a walk around the city? Take a tour of the sights? I know of SEVERAL excellent sushi restaurants we could visit.” 

Anathema looked a bit sheepish.

“This is sort of silly, but, would you maybe be interested in taking a yoga class?”

Aziraphale’s bright smile flickered. 

“Yoga?” He repeated.

“No, that’s stupid, I’m so sorry, I’m not going to make you take a yoga class with me! That would be ridiculous.”

“No no no no,” Aziraphale shook his head firmly, “If yoga is what you want to do lets do it! Is it something you miss?”

Anathema’s expression softened as she took another sip of tea.

“Mom and I used to take rooftop yoga classes every day in the summer. I’ve been trying to do videos ever since I came to England but they’re not the same as having a teacher. Really, it’s silly, I can do it on my own.”

“No! That sounds lovely, of course I’ll join you.” Aziraphale did some mental calculations. “Do you mind if I invite Crowley to join us?” He asked. It wasn’t part of his original plan, but he would be damned if he was going to go through with this humiliating exercise without some moral, er, immoral support. 

Anathema, of course didn’t mind. Aziraphale called Crowley up right away. Crowley made him repeat the question three times over the phone before he understood the situation. “Hold on, YOU are going to take a YOGA class? And you want ME there?” He agreed at once. He cackled evilly for the entirety of the drive over to the bookshop 

“AZIRAPHALE!” Crowley shouted as he burst through the back entrance of the shop, glancing around in anticipation. He couldn’t imagine what Aziraphale would wear to a yoga class. Did they allow one to participate while wearing tweed, he wondered? Aziraphale would be the first to find out! “I’m here!” 

Aziraphale descended the stairs in beige sweatpants and an off white t-shirt, neither of which were particularly flattering for a portly gentleman. He carried a light purple yoga mat under his arm like it was a dead rat and looked absolutely haggard. 

Crowley grinned widely and spun to demonstrate his own yoga ensemble. The whole thing cost upwards of 1000 pounds. His shiny black yoga pants left very little to the imagination, and made his legs look like chicken legs. His 450 quid sweat-wicking black top could have been sprayed on. Aziraphale pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a deep sigh.

“Hello gentlemen!” Anathema peeked out of the guest room door, looking more cheerful than either of them had yet seen her. She stepped out into the hallway, looking as though she had been born in patterned boho pants and a stylish messy top knot. “Crowley,” her brow furrowed, “As I was getting ready, it occurred to me, will some of the, uh, spiritual aspects of yoga be tough for you? I know that demons can be uncomfortable in holy places.” Anathema, while desperate to avoid saying anything offensive, couldn’t shake the feeling that she had certainly just done exactly that.

“Mm, depends.” Crowley asked, crossing his arms and leaning backwards slightly. “Is this going to be one of those yoga classes where mostly white girls give the poses funny names and go to lose weight rather than to achieve spiritual enlightenment?”

“Oh, almost definitely.” Anathema answered.

Crowley wrinkled his nose. “Shouldn’t be a problem, then, I expect.” 

~*~

Maeve Dowling had taught hot yoga at Triyoga studio for about 3 years, and made a distinct effort to acknowledge first time yogis without singling them out and making them uncomfortable. Usually her strategy was to smile at them while they set up their mat. If they responded with an anxious wave, she’d sidle up and shake their hand and ask if they had any questions. She had no idea how to approach the three new pupils sitting in the direct middle of the classroom, however. The girl, comfortably warming up with a flawless headstand, obviously knew what she was doing. The two middle aged men, however, seemed to more interested in whispering in one another’s ears and cackling at their own jokes than freeing their minds and focusing on an intentional practice. She stepped over to them, mimicking the expression of zen-like calmness she learned on her six day yoga teacher’s retreat in Morocco.

“Welcome, gentlemen!” She spoke in a a practiced soothing tone. “Is this your first yoga class?”

“Not at all!” The blonde man answered, adjusting himself into a very awkward looking seated position. “It’s just, erm, been a few years, that’s all.” 

“He learnt in the Indus Valley he tells me.” The slim red haired man whispered. “So I’d reckon he’s due for a refresher.” 

“How nice!” Maeve said, distractedly. She’d never in her life had to ask a grown man to remove his sunglasses while inside a dimly lit 33 degree yoga studio, and silently decided that she wasn’t going to break that streak today. Could he be blind? She returned to her position at the front of the room, deciding to be extra descriptive with her verbal cues that day. She worried for a bit as she plugged her phone into the sound system, preparing some soothing, somewhat foreign sounding music to set the mood. 

For a moment, she considered simplifying some of the poses to make the class more welcoming for the new students. She eyed the rest of the class. A group of well muscled, focused women in athletic wear who came here to shed some pounds stared back at her. She decided against it. The newcomers would just have to hang on for dear life like everyone else.

~*~ONE EXTREMELY SWEATY AND UNCOMFORTABLE HOUR LATER~*~

“It seems to me,” Aziraphale said, looking like a sweaty pink gumball as he desperately fanned himself on his exit from the studio, “that the practice has somewhat strayed from its roots.” 

“You shouldn’t feel embarrassed for falling during the balancing poses.” Anathema said. “Yoga is about finding what works for you.” 

“And what works for Aziraphale, apparently, is that bit at the end where you just lie down like a lump.” Crowley laughed. He was just as sweaty as Aziraphale but somehow managed to hide it, while the angel looked like a flustered older woman having a hot flash.

“You both did great.” Anathema lied. “Crowley, the teacher even complimented your Cobra pose!” 

“Well she WOULD, wouldn’t she!?” Aziraphale gave Crowley a little glare for obviously cheating. “Anyway,” Aziraphale closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded himself of the plan. “Anathema, did you enjoy yourself?” He asked.

Anathema paused for a moment at the exit of the studio, for the first time in a while taking stock of how she felt. Her muscles felt warm, tired, and flexible. Her heart rate, which had gone up when it was supposed to during the strenuous poses, was back to normal, but her whole being felt somehow calmer.

“I think I did!” She answered with a smile, opening the door for her companions. “It’s so nice of you to take me out like this, you really don’t have to.”

“Dear girl, don’t think of it!” Aziraphale said. “Anything to get you back on your feet.” 

“Or, head, as the case may be.” Crowley muttered and Aziraphale smiled at him. 

Anathema, walking between the two men through the streets of Soho, felt more safe and comfortable than she had in weeks. She wasn’t one to rely on others to feel protected, she was a witch, after all, but something about walking in between an angel and a demon, both of whom behaving like they were her bizarre godfathers, did in fact feel rather good. There was something else she was picking up on, though, and she’d been wondering about it for a few days. Unfortunately for all involved, subtlety was not one of Anathema’s many talents. 

“Are you two in love with eachother?” Anathema asked, demonstrating the bluntness which had caused her fourth grade teacher to send home several notes to her mother. 

“Oh!” Crowley said, glancing at Aziraphale for his cue.

“NO!” Aziraphale blurted, shaking his head wildly. “Of course… I mean, I’m an angel, I love everyone, but we’re not, you know IN love. That would be… that’s impossible, obviously.” 

“Oh.” Anathema said, noticing that the dark clad man to her right seemed to be tensing up. “I’m so sorry, it’s just, you know, you two seem so close.” 

“Well, we’ve known eachother for such a long time, you can understand how we could get to know one another. The arrangement…”

“The ARRANGEMENT!?” Crowley snapped. “We’re back to the arrangement, are we? Interesting. Well, I’m off then, nice to see you, angel, call me when you need a quick temptation, all right?” And with that Crowley abruptly turned around and sauntered away. 

“Oh dear.” Aziraphale whispered, watching his love blend into the crowded streets. Anathema realized that something had gone quite wrong in that interaction, and looked nervously at Aziraphale for guidance. 

“I’m so sorry.” She said. cursing herself. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

“It’s not your fault.” Aziraphale sighed deeply and gently took her arm. “Let’s just go home, shall we?” She gripped his arm for support and the two of them walked the rest of the way back to the bookshop.


	3. Things Go Badly

Something about the way Newton Pulsifer ate his breakfast porridge gave Anathema a nervous tic. First of all he made oatmeal every morning, which, instead of dirtying one bowl, dirtied exactly one pot, their glass measuring cup, a bowl, spoon, and spatula. Which would be all right if he cleaned up after himself. But no, he left all his dishes to soak in the sink, which meant when Anathema went to pour herself a glass of water she had to maneuver around several dishes poking out of slimy water with the bloated remnants of his breakfast oats floating around like dead fish in a polluted pond. And that was just the aftermath. The actual act of Newt eating breakfast porridge was like some kind of body horror special effect. He sat there, hunched over the bowl, reading a newspaper or book while shoveling spoonful after spoonful of the gray mess in his face without even giving himself a chance to swallow.

Anathema told herself that this was a normal, workable relationship problem. The sort of thing married couples joke about at their 50th wedding anniversary. But then it finally happened. After six times asking him to clean up the oatmeal pot right after he ate, Newt at last explained to her that at home his mum would always clean it up. He paused at this, with a sort of blank expression, as though waiting for her to pick up on the hint. She realized that, grown man, Newton Pulsifer, expected HER to take over the mum role and clean up his breakfast pot. To clean up the oatmeal which he made with real milk, the kind that she didn’t drink on principle. 

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?” She shrieked. She hadn’t meant to shriek. She hadn’t meant to say anything out loud, but the pure incandescent rage she felt at that moment took over her whole body and she shrieked before she even fully comprehended the situation. 

Newt’s expression of utter fear and incomprehension shamed her back into silence. She apologized for her outburst and went back outside to tend to her herb garden. Her hands shook as she put her gloves on, though, and deep down she knew that something was deeply and profoundly broken in her relationship.

~*~

Now, in Aziraphale’s kitchen, Anathema poured her host another cup of tea while he fretted at the table. 

“It seems to me like Crowley really likes you.” She said, stating what was to Aziraphale, at this point, the very much obvious. She turned around and sat down opposite him, sliding him his cup of tea. “I’m so sorry, again, for bringing it up, it was so stupid of me.” 

“Crowley and I…” Aziraphale tried to speak, but how could he explain? What he and Crowley had was inexplicable even to them, there was a reason they both spent centuries avoiding mentioning it. “Crowley can be very difficult.” He managed to say. 

“Well.” Anathema gave a little shrug. “He is a demon.” 

“I’m well aware.” Aziraphale snapped with a bit more venom than he meant. 

“I just…” Anathema gently blew some steam from her tea to cool it. “Just seeing you two speak together, you’re both so comfortable and… fond of eachother. I never had that with Newt.”

“You seemed rather fond of him at the apocalypse.” Aziraphale said. 

“Agnes seemed to think he was all right.” Anathema shrugged. “In hindsight starting a relationship because your ancestor predicted you would fuck him doesn’t seem like the best idea.”

“Is that really…?!? How you…?” Aziraphale gaped for a moment at that. Wow. He felt a little rush of anticipation at sharing that juicy bit of gossip with Crowley later, but then he remembered his current situation. “Let’s just agree that everything about both of our situations are, erm, abnormal.” Aziraphale said. 

“It’s just so sad.” Anathema shook her head. “Me and Newt were awful for eachother and we were together for years, and you two… well. You just seem so much more well suited.” 

Aziraphale glumly took a bite of one of the cranberry scones he had set out for breakfast. 

“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” He asked.

~*~

Crowley hadn’t really felt like doing anything very demonic in quite some time. When so much of your time was spent with a literal angel the urge to spread chaos and evil began to dim somewhat. Humans, he had discovered centuries ago, were talented enough at making themselves (and others) miserable that he really didn’t need to do all that much to spur them along.

But after storming way from Aziraphale and steaming in his apartment for a few hours, for the first time in a long while he felt a pressing impulse to commit some old fashioned BAD DEEDS. He oozed out into the streets of London, hands in his pockets, looking for trouble. Passing by a table of young women having drinks and enjoying themselves, he, with a gesture of his hand, introduced within each of them a doubt that any of the others were their real friends. He surreptitiously disappeared a pack of cigarettes from a young construction worker listening to music on a street corner and put them in the pocket of one of his coworkers, so that later he would accuse him of knicking it. After nearly being run over in a pedestrian crosswalk by an impatient driver, he convinced the man to speed rudely around another car, thus setting off a chain reaction of dickishness amongst every driver on the road. 

It didn’t feel good to do these things, exactly, and it didn’t really make him feel better, but at least he felt a bit like his old self. Everyone’s mood around him grew darker, more bitter, more matching with his own mood. He pulled out his phone and began to tweet out some bad faith arguments about Brexit which were sure to send several thousand people’s blood pressure up. The minute he pressed tweet on a particularly hot take, a text arrived from Aziraphale with a ding.

“Shall we meet?” It read. 

Crowley stopped in the middle of a busy sidewalk just to frown at his mobile, sending small shockwaves of irritation to everyone behind him who suddenly had to maneuver around an obstacle. 

“How about the second primary rendezvous?” He texted back. Aziraphale’s text bubble appeared and vanished, reappeared and then revanished, three flashing dots telling him that Aziraphale was typing something and then erasing it. The poor sod probably didn’t realize that the other person can see that sort of thing. He stayed where we was, paying no mind to the flow of pedestrian traffic, and some more bold people began to audibly grumble as they pushed past. Crowley smirked.

“Is that one Bedford square?” Aziraphale finally responded. Crowley rolled his eyes and dialed Aziraphale’s number.

“The cafe at the British museum?” Aziraphale sugggested hopefully when he picked up the phone. 

“There never was a second primary rendezvous, you… potted plant.” Crowley muttered, finally beginning to swagger forward again. 

“Well, considering how you treat your plants, I find that a bit offensive.” 

“Oh are you offended? Sorry, angel. I thought as your GOOD FRIEND I’d be able to say such a thing.” 

“Ah.” Aziraphale said. He took several quick breaths, but, similarly to his previous abortive text messages, could not quite land on anything to actually say. “Please don’t be upset with me.” He managed. 

Crowley stopped cold again, this time causing a woman pushing a pram to painfully run over a middle aged businessman’s foot and cause a brief scene. 

“Fuck it.” Crowley whispered, and zapped himself through the phone line. The people around him, all distracted by the altercation between the mum and the businessman, didn’t notice a very expensive phone clatter to the ground, screen cracking in a spiderweb as it landed. 

Aziraphale very much did notice the six foot tall demon who suddenly appeared out of his mobile and who landed somewhat awkwardly across from him in the alley behind the bookshop.

“What on earth are you doing out here?” Crowley asked, dusting himself off and glancing at the overflowing bins all around them with distaste. 

“I, erm, didn’t want Anathema to hear.” Aziraphale admitted. 

“Oh yes, Anathema. We can’t trouble Ms. Device, can we?” Crowley snipped, adjusting his sunglasses unnecessarily. He crossed his arms and paced back and forth in the alley with SUCH exaggerated swagger that it was a miracle he stayed upright.

“You know I love you…” Aziraphale began, but Crowley cut him off.

“That wasn’t what you sssaid earlier!” He hissed, keeping his voice low. “You said it was imposssible! For an angel to…” Crowley was surprised at himself, at how upset he was allowing himself to become. “It’s just like how it was, you look at me all googly eyed and you ask me for help and you smile all lovely but you never LIKED me.” 

Aziraphale actually gasped. “No, Crowley, of course that’s not it at all! I always…” He sputtered.

“You told me! More than once! You told me you never liked me. So why, for the love of… someone, can’t we tell the bicycle-riding witch woman that we’re together? Everyone else knows!” 

“It’s…” Aziraphale, soft at the best of times, looked like he could spill over into tears at any moment. “Everyone else just knows that we’re two people who love each other. She knows that I’m an angel. She knows that I was sent here, by God, to keep an eye on humanity and that I failed. That I… grew too fond of it here.” 

“And grew too fond of… me?” Crowley asked.

“No! It’s just, to everyone else we’re a couple, but she would know we’re an angel and a demon.” As Aziraphale said it out loud, the odd aspect of their relationship which he couldn’t bring himself to share with a human sounded very cruel. Crowley, usually all quips and melodrama, stilled. 

“You’ve always known what I am.” He said softly. “I’d thought that… never mind.” Crowley adjusted his sunglasses, expression hard, and began to walk away.

“Oh PLEASE don’t!” Aziraphale protested, but Crowley was already around the corner, and by the time Aziraphale followed him out onto the sidewalk he was already lost in the crowds. Aziraphale, feeling quite alone now beside the bookshop, stared out at the streets of Soho in a rising state of anxiety. 

~*~

The Marquess Pub, festering in a dark corner of London, had transformed some time in the mid eighties to a drinking establishment almost exclusively patronized by police. Theoretically a person might hear that and assume it was a safe place to go, afer all, law enforcement would be there to… enforce the law. But that hypothetical person had clearly never spent a great deal of time with belligerent men with power complexes, no accountability, and untreated stress disorders.

Crowley sat alone, wallowing in his own misery at a grimy table near the rear of the pub, next to a meme taped to the wall depicting a crying white child amongst a crowd of women wearing niqabs with the caption “Britain, 2050.” He was on his sixth pint.

A few tables down, a group of off duty cops sat together, joking so loudly and so unfunnily it was unclear whether they were enjoying one another’s company or about to start brawling. The more they drank they louder they grew. Despite the noisy backdrop, and his own deepening intoxication, an undercurrent of something darker began to pervade the space. Crowley shuddered, an oddly familiar sensation filling him him with a sense of rising panic. It was as though a person was standing behind him, pouring a tiny amount ice cold water down the back of his neck. 

“Oh no…” He muttered. 

Emerging from the deepest shadows in the corner of the bar, two frumpy shapes abruptly moved as one. Whatever they were, they had never walked in through the entrance. Crowley was sure of that. As they approached him, he could see that their eyes were nearly entirely black. 

“Bugger.” He whispered, trying to sober up as fast as he could, and glancing around for exit routes. 

“No, it’s Hastur.” Hastur said. “You might remember me.” The grime-coated duke of hell took a clumsy seat across from Crowley in the booth. His companion, who seemed to bear the countenance and aura of one of those centipedes that jump off your bathroom walls at 2am, remained silent, lurking at the end of the table.

Aziraphale had of course told Crowley what happened in hell the day after the apocalypse, but Crowley struggled in the moment to determine how he ought to act in this scenario. They were all still frightened of him, surely? Or was his bought time up, and now he was to be dragged back into hell by his perfectly coiffed hair? The old crowd would be pleased to see the holy water worked this time around, he realized with a chill of despair. 

“We’ve noticed…” Hastur was about to begin a lecture but became distracted by the printed out meme on the wall. He squinted at it blankly. “What does that mean?” He asked.

“Honestly I couldn’t even tell you.” Crowley muttered. 

“Is it a joke?” Hastur asked.

“Something like one, I guess.” 

Hastur shook his head in disapproval and turned his attention back to the issue at hand. 

“You’ve been corrupting people again.” Hastur said. “We can tell.” 

“Well… I mean, corrupting’s a bit harsh…” 

“You have not corrupted a single soul since the failed apocalypse.” Hastur said. “Until this afternoon.” 

“Really?” Crowley made a face. “That long?” 

“Beelzebub thought you may have returned to our side.” 

“I’m not on a ssside.” Crowley hissed. “I’m just… you know. Existing. Doing my thing.” 

“In any case.” The small demon at the end of the table spoke in a voice like shattering glass. “You must come with us now.” 

Crowley nodded, not meeting reptile or insect eyes with any of his companions. He stared pointedly down at his half empty pint glass.

“And if I decline?” He asked.

“You must come with us now.” Both Hastur and the other demon said simultaneously. 

“Right.” Crowley said, and leapt up out of his seat before the demons could respond. He elbowed the centipede demon aside and began a sprint towards the exit. 

“OY!” One of the police officers jumped out of his seat and blocked Crowley’s path with a menacing grunt. “Where are you off to so fast then?” 

“Don’t, honesssstly!” Crowley tried to do his trick where he turned full demon to terrify the human but he felt four, chill, slimy hands restraining him from all sides before he could do so. Their greasy touch was almost definitely going to ruin his suit. 

“Thank you, officer!” Hastur smiled at the table of inebriated men as the three demons stepped past them towards the door. “You’ve been very helpful.” 

As the prospect of his future torment flashed before his eyes, Crowley couldn’t stop thinking about how upset Aziraphale was going to be once he found out. Their last words had been so unkind. The dirty streets of London opened before them with a belch of sulfur and the demons descended into the darkness. His holiday was over. He was going Back Home. 

~*~

Aziraphale had closed the bookshop early that day, disappointing one crowd of tourists and one antiquarian bookseller who was looking for a buyer for his leather-bound 1865 James Duffy bible. The shop sat in darkness while Aziraphale shut himself away in the rear office. For the past several hours he had read and re-read the same paragraph in his book, gleaning no information from it whatever. As his eyes passed over sentences, his mind returned to his conversation with Crowley. Over and over he’d hear himself say “she would know we’re an angel and a demon,” along with all the implications that wretched statement carried (like he was somehow superior to Crowley, that Crowley was inherently evil, all ideas which he thought he had abandoned long ago), and remember the hurt expression that lowered over Crowley’s face. He finally gave in, snapping the book shut and discarding it on a side table. 

Back in the old days, when he and Crowley were both, ostensibly, mortal enemies, and therefore met up for lunch on a much less frequent basis, Aziraphale had attempted to keep tabs on his demon counterpart. He picked up on a kind of spiritual energy shift when Crowley departed earth for Hell in order to make his reports. Aziraphale could always sense it when Crowley was gone; existing on earth felt different. It was like biting into a cake only to discover that whoever had made it had used applesauce instead of oil and sugar to make it more healthful. 

To Aziraphale’s surprise, earth felt very low calorie at the moment. 

He rooted around for his phone, telling himself that surely Crowley wouldn’t be so stupid to _depart the planet_ just because they had had a bit of a row. But whatever tendrils of spiritual energy he put out, the result was the same. No Crowley. As soon as he found his phone (worriedly blowing on it to unlock it,) he texted him asking where he was, and if he was all right. Crowley’s phone, picked up off the streets of London about 5 minutes after it dropped there, dinged unheard in a lost and found drawer. 

Aziraphale shoved his chair away from his desk and began to pace around his office. There was no way Crowley would be so stupid and reckless as to choose to return to hell. Perhaps he had gone to heaven? Just as stupid, there was no point. Could he have been discorporated? How awful! People often got into automobile wrecks when they were emotionally upset, what if what he had said had hurt Crowley so deeply that…

“Do you need anything?” Anathema appeared at the door of Aziraphale’s office. Her own afternoon had been spent in a series of deepening reddit quarrels with pro-oil pipeline activists. Her eyes were still red and somewhat crazed from righteous fury. 

“Crowley and I are lovers!” Aziraphale blurted. It was, if he was being honest with himself, not how he had imagined this interaction going.

There was an awkward pause. Anathema pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. 

“We have been for years now!” Aziraphale continued, now that he had started finding himself unable to stop. “I love him more than anything!”

“Why the hell are you just telling me this now?!?” Anathema asked, finally.

“Because I’m absolutely horrible. And now Crowley’s gone, and, oh Lord, Anathema, I don’t know what to do!” 

“Gone? Where did he go?” She asked, stepping all the way into his office and crossing her arms. 

“I think he may have gone to hell. Or discorporated, in which case, he would also end up in hell.”

“And they’re gonna tear him apart down there right? For stopping the apocalypse?” 

“Or worse.” Aziraphale said. 

Anathema strode out of Aziraphale’s office with a confidence that took him by surprise. 

“Wh- where are you going?” He asked, following after her. 

“He’s a demon right? Well I’m a witch. I’ll summon him. I need a book, though. And some herbs. And candles.” Anathema glanced through Aziraphale’s very solid collection of old books of witchcraft, pulling a dark leather cover engraved with intricate gold lettering. “This’ll work.” She glanced back at Aziraphale expectantly. 

“Erm.” Aziraphale wrung his hands. He was pretty sure that witchcraft was one of those activities that, as an angel, he was meant to try to discourage. “I’ll get the candles.” He rushed off.


	4. Brimstone and whatnot

Crowley didn’t miss the 1200s, which he supposed was why hell never aesthetically progressed far beyond that blighted era. Hell somehow managed to take all of the worst parts of the dark ages and set them in the ABSOLUTELY worst parts of a Thatcher era office complex. He and his captors progressed down a series of dank hallways, decorated with frayed maroon carpet, guts, and ephemera. A series of demons, all in various states of putrefaction, some wearing cute animals as hats, shoved him through the dark towards some unknown end object. He passed by room after room, each overstuffed with the damned, trying to shut out the sounds of screaming and crying and the stench of burning flesh. This was just the warm up. Whatever awaited him would surely be worse. 

Finally, Crowley, his captors, and a growing mob of curious observers filed into a grim looking conference meeting room. A decaying corpse lay at the center of a long conference table, next to a moldy speakerphone in the shape of a demonic sigil.

Beelzebub sat on their throne, at the head of the table, looking like a human suffering through the last stages of some kind of bacterial infection.

“I didn’t think we’d be able to catch you so quickly.” They said. 

“Yeah, well, you know.” Crowley made one of his many versatile scoffing noises. “I guess you got lucky.” His shrugging demeanor successfully hid his desperate searching glances for a possible escape route. 

“Anything to report?” Beelzebub asked, their expression unreadable. 

“I don’t do reports anymore, remember? I’m out! I’m done!” Crowley snapped. “And I’ve half a mind to, you know, start spraying some holy water around here just to make a point.” 

Some of the lesser demons flinched, but Beelzebub remained still. 

“I’ll report for you then.” They said, leaning forward, fingers pressed together. “Today you actively tempted 45 humans to damnation, three of which are about 85% of the way there already. Two humans, at this moment, surfing the world wide web…”

“No one calls it that.” Crowley muttered.

“On a page called TWEETER are at this moment cursing one another in response to one of your writings.” 

Crowley shuffled his feet, refusing to look at anyone. What a nightmare. 

“I ask you again, to whom do you report?” Beelzebub asked, speaking in a low, monotone growl. 

“NO ONE. MYSELF.” Crowley snapped. 

Every second that passed was another second his enemies might figure out that he wasn’t some weird, overpowered angel/demon who could soak happily in holy water. Beelzebub’s dark, pus encrusted eyes glanced him up and down dubiously.

“Take him to the cells.” They said.

~*~

Aziraphale led Anathema to the back section of the bookshop where he usually performed similar, angetlic sorts of rituals, sweating a bit at the thought of dark magicks taking place there. Obviously he wasn’t going to complain or anything. Anathema was being ever so helpful, and he really needed an ally at that moment.

With her large square glasses on and hair pulled back, Anathema looked more put together than Aziraphale had yet seen her. After a satisfied nod in approval of her workspace she got right to it. First she flipped through several ancient demonic texts, trying to determine the right sort of ceremony for the job. Once she made her decision, the preparations took up most of the space in the room. Her laptop, plugged awkwardly into an extension cord, sat open on the floor, displaying a website that looked like it had been made in 1997 by some kind of Wiccan sex cult. She set three large tomes in varying states of decay open to different pages on three different antique bookstands (Aziraphale had helpfully given her one of those foam boards which protect book spines), and she busily drew a pentagram-esque shape on the floor, containing various demonic symbols. After finishing a rather complicated one she looked up with a triumphant smile. 

“Now! Salt!” She said.

“Salt?” Aziraphale asked.

“To keep the demons in. You can’t open a gate to hell without any precautions. That’s like, witch safety basics 101. My mum kept a poster of them on the wall back at home.” 

“Really? A demon can’t step over salt?”

“Not if it’s in an unbroken circle.”

Aziraphale paused to imagine the implications of this new knowledge. If he had some tasty leftovers that he wanted to make sure Crowley didn’t nibble on he could just make a salt ring around them in the fridge. He could put a salt ring around the bookshop to make sure Crowley didn’t leave the house while he was buying him Christmas presents! The possibilities were endless. 

His imaginations paused when he remembered that, at the moment, Crowley was nowhere, a problem which needed to be remedied before any of these possibilities came into being.

“Well I think I have some in the kitchen…” He muttered, trying to remember where he had put it. 

“Good, I brought some of my salt from the dead sea with me but I don’t think it’s going to be quite enough to get a good seal on the circle.” 

Together they were able to set things up to Anathema’s liking. They shut off all the lights and closed the curtains. Soon candles provided the only dim source of light in the high ceilinged room. Anathema muttered some kind of chant in poorly pronounced Sumerian as she delicately lit each candle with a long ceremonial branch. Aziraphale, whose Sumerian was rusty but rather good, didn’t correct her. These kinds of demonic rituals were WELL beyond his angelic purview, and the whole place was giving him a bad case of the shivers. Anathema laid a comforting hand on his arm as she passed him in her rounds, and once the stage was set they took their places on opposite sides of the pentagram.

“Whatever you do, don’t disturb the salt line.” Anathema warned.

“I’m not a child.” Aziraphale protested, but Anathema just gave him a look and he somewhat abashedly nodded in agreement.

Taking the black leather book from its foam bookstand, Anathema began to perform the rites. There were about 15 steps, and sometimes the texts disagreed on the correct order in which they should be performed. She noticed, about halfway through, that she had accidentally put the goats blood and hartshorne in the chalice together when she was meant to have reserved half the blood for later. Hoping it wasn’t a key error, she carried on with the ceremony, not wanting to waste her momentum. 

The darkness of the room seemed to press in against the faint glow of the candles, their small radius of light diminishing supernaturally as the forces of hell grew close. This was not a wholly unfamiliar scene to Aziraphale, but it did bother him to see it taking place right in his bookshop. The streetnoise from outside dimmed to nothing, as if they had both just put on sound silencing headphones. After a few minutes Anathema’s recitations seemed to echo, as though the two of them were standing in a substantial cavern instead of a comfortable room in London. 

Right before Anathema began the last phase of the rites, the flames of the candles burned a deep shade of red and began to grow taller. She smiled, this was exactly what was supposed to happen at this point. She finished the ceremony by chanting the final stanza three times, holding the ceremonial chalice to her chest, and, almost apologetically, spitting into it.

As soon as the spittle hit the decoction a monstrous roar cut through the silence, and a black tear in space appeared above the direct center of the pentagram. Both Anathema and Aziraphale glanced hopefully at it, but instead of Crowley’s familiar form, a large, purple, bulbous demon who looked like a cross between a dragon and a a minotaur tore its way into their presence.

“WHO DARES TO SUMMON AZRAGH THE DEMON!?!?” The monster bellowed, voice like a crack of thunder overhead, stench like the fresh ashen remains of Pompeii. 

Aziraphale gave Anathema a little uncomfortable cringe like someone had just said something awkward at a dinner party.

“Oh uh, that’d be me.” Anathema said, waving and smiling politely at the demon to get his attention. “I think I goofed, I messed up the part with the hartshorne, I knew I should’ve restarted.” She explained with a little laugh. “Sorry to waste your time!”

“AZRAGH SHALL MAKE YOU REGRET YOUR MOTHER BORNED YOU! HE SHALL BURN THIS RESIDENCE TO THE GROUND!” 

“Oh please don’t, the shop’s already burned down once recently and at this point that would be quite boring.” Aziraphale said. “Pardon me for asking, you came here from hell, did you?” 

“AN ANGEL!?” Azragh turned around, furious. “I SHALL DRAG YOU TO HELL BY YOUR WINGS! I SHALL CRUSH EVERY BONE IN YOUR HUMAN FORM!”

“Yes, erm, quite.” Aziraphale answered with a broad but joyless smile. “But did you happen to see the Demon Crowley down there?” 

Azragh bristled. 

“THAT POSH BASTARD!?” He asked.

“Just the same!” Aziraphale said, with a cute little triumphant clap.

“I WILL KILL YOU ALL! I WILL KILL…”

Before, presumably, commencing to kill them, Anathema whispered the last line of the banishment incantation and Azragh was sucked back into hell with a popping noise. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt you!” Anathema said to Aziraphale, closing out of a page on a Wiccan “Find a Demon” website. “Did you have any more questions for him?”

“Oh don’t worry at all, dear.” Aziraphale crinkled his nose at her. “I don’t think he was going to be very cooperative in any case.” 

Anathema began to scramble around the room, picking through her bags and pulling out more vials and herbs. 

“I can do it again!” She announced, pulling another glass vial of goats blood from a zippered backpack pocket. “I’ve got enough stuff to make one more try!” 

“Oh really? You don’t mind? It all looked rather exhausting…” But as Aziraphale protested Anathema was already back doing her chants, nose in the book. He smiled gratefully.

~*~

Jails in general tend to be hellish, jails in hell, well. They were just as much an implement of torture as anything else. A large, broken television on the opposite side of the room played the film “Wings of Desire,” but in such a way that it froze, sputtered, and cut out, and with sound quality that would only play either the highest or lowest pitches, at impossible to guess intervals. Crowley, chained to a wall that was covered in roaches and filth, did his best to close his eyes and mentally escape. His mind wasn’t always the safest place to retreat to, but it was better than his miserable present. He kept thinking about Aziraphale. Even thinking about Aziraphale while he was in hell felt wretched, somehow, like he was soiling the memory. He opened his eyes again.

Peter Falk was introducing himself on screen, as a fallen angel. His pitch-perfect delivery was spoiled by the screen glitching and then restarting the scene over, this time completely inaudible. This was too specific a torture, it must have been one of the ones he had come up with. Crowley groaned and tried to yank his wrists out of his chains for the hundredth time.

All of a sudden, a bizarre, irresistable sensation began to pull him away from where he was. At first he thought it was some other torture, but he didn’t have time to ponder for long. He felt like he was falling, like he’d slipped on ice with no chance of catching himself and was just in for the ride now. 

With a snap he opened his eyes and was suddenly no longer in a cell in the pits of hell, but in a very familiar bookshop. He let out a pained groan of relief, unable to process what was happening.

“CROWLEY!” Aziraphale shouted, about to rush into the circle.

“STOP! NOT YET!” Anathema shouted, making Aziraphale pause right at the edge of the salt line. “It could be a trick. Demon!” She addressed Crowley directly, “What is your name?” 

“I… what?” Crowley didn’t feel quite right, and when he held up his hands in front of his face he saw that they were translucent. “Hold on, did you two actually summon me from hell?” 

“Oh do just answer the question, dear.” Aziraphale said, looking physically pained to be held back from him. His expression was so sweet and so filled with relief that it was all Crowley could do not to reach out and pinch his precious little face. 

“Oh!” Memories of demonic etiquette, taught and forgotten millenia ago, reminded Crowley that he was supposed to introduce himself first thing in a summoning situation. “Sorry, I forgot. It’s Crowley! Yeah, uh, I am the demon Anthony J Crowley.” 

“What’s the J stand for?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Just a J, really.” He answered with a little smile. 

“It’s him.” Aziraphale began to rush forward again.

“NO! Don’t break the pentagram!” This time it was Crowley who shouted and stopped Aziraphale, who looked quite put out. “All sorts of creeps could sneak out if you do that.” 

“And this isn’t your full physical form is it?” Anathema asked, looking through Crowley’s, spiritually translucent shape. He was see-through enough that she could read the titles of the books on the shelves behind him.

“The corporeal form’s still down there. You’ve just summoned the spirit, I’m afraid.” Crowley said. “How did you even know they brought me back to hell?” 

“I could feel it.” Aziraphale said, still relieved to have Crowley with them, but starting to lose it a bit. “Oh Crowley, this is awful I’m so sorry. I told Anathema everything, I love you and I am so sorry.”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale for a moment, so relieved to see his angel again that he had almost forgotten their fight. “Do you love me? Honestly?”

“I love you more than anything! I love that you’re a demon! I love your questions! Can you forgive me?” 

Crowley, if he had had a body, might just have flushed.

“I forgive you, then, I suppose. Can I even do that? Is that allowed?” 

“Bugger what’s allowed.” Aziraphale said, and grinned with pure, radiant relief. 

Crowley looked around the bookshop, a place he had never again expected to see. “You were able to summon me? Just like that?” 

“We had a few little hiccups.” Anathema said.

“Anathema is a very talented occultist.” Aziraphale said, like he was showing off his daughter after a piano recital. 

“What are we going to do about your physical form?” Anathema asked. 

“Ooh I can answer this one.” Aziraphale said excitedly. “You’ll have to possess someone! Shall I fetch Madame Tracy?” 

Both Crowley and Anathema recoiled.

“There’s no time!” Anathema protested. She looked hopefully up at Crowley. “Could you possess me?” Anathema asked, head tilted, expression deathly serious.

“I…” Before Crowley could answer her question Anathema stepped confidently into the salt circle, careful to keep it intact. As soon as a human stood within the threshold Crowley sensed every demon in the area rushing forward at the sensation of a witch to corrupt. Before he could think he sort of enveloped her and jumped both of them out of the circle before the hordes of hell attempted to unleash themselves into her soul. 

~*~

Aziraphale sat across from Anathema, trying to guess what was going on in his guest’s head. Anathama’s physical form now carried both herself and Crowley, and was seated at the kitchen table. Aziraphale had poured himself a cup of herbal tea for his nerves, but whenever he tried to pick his up his hands shook so much that it spilled over the sides.

“Well, this is all very weird.” Crowley’s voice said from Anathema’s body, making Aziraphale bust out in yet another fit of wild, hysterical giggles. He wished he could stop. It was really a terribly embarrassing response to stress. 

It was about 4:30am. Crowley, sharing Anathama’s mindspace at about 50/50, could feel his host’s exhaustion. Her thoughts were blurred and overwhelmed. Her eyelids drooped even as he tried to focus out of them. 

_You should sleep._ He thought at Anathema.

“SHIT HOW DID YOU DO THAT?” Anathema blurted out loud.

“What? What’s happening?” Aziraphale asked, worried. 

“I just told her she should go to sleep that’s all!” Crowley said out loud, again, his voice coming from Anathema’s body, making Aziraphale’s face twist in an attempt to keep in his irrational laughter. 

_We can just think at eachother?_ Anathema thought in response. 

_Yeah, I’ve always found that easier than the whole, conversation with yourself, thing._ Crowley responded.

_How many times have you done this before?_ She asked.

_Oh, possession was VERY “in” in the late 1800s, I did it a few times for a laugh. Arthur Conan Doyle nearly shat himself._

“You know what, we should all probably go to bed.” Aziraphale said. It was subtle, but he could tell from Anathema’s expression whenever Crowley was driving or she was in charge, and for the last few seconds she’d been making the most bizarre rapidly changing facial tics he’d ever seen. He stifled down another giggle. 

“I need some sort of plan before we go to bed, otherwise I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep in this condition.” Anathema said. 

“A plan? Oh that’s simple.” Aziraphale shrugged. “Tomorrow I go to hell and retrieve Crowley’s physical form and we put him back together, tickety-boo.” 

“That’s not REMOTELY simple, Angel!” Crowley responded. 

“Well, we can’t get a new form the traditional way.” Aziraphale said, recognizing Crowley looking at him out of Anathema’s eyes. “Also, now we know precisely where your body is, and I’ve gone to hell and back, before, Crowley, it isn’t as though its particularly hard. There’s an escalator.”

Crowley was about to protest but Anathema took the wheel before he could.

“We could go to Tadfield. Adam made you a new body before, Aziraphale, I’m sure he could do it again with Crowley.” 

“And just leave Crowley’s corporeal form in Hell to rot and fester?” Aziraphale asked, stunned. “No no no, besides, I want to avoid reminding Adam of his own antichrist-ness as much as possible, he’s very happily human at the moment but he’s only 13 and I don’t want him getting any ideas.” 

“You’re not going to hell for me, Angel, I forbid it. They’ll tear you apart.” Crowley said, taking Aziraphale’s hand. Both of them started at the new sensation. Crowley was used to having slightly larger hands than Aziraphale, and Aziraphale had never had even a slight interest in holding Anathema’s hand. 

“I’m not helpless, Crowley.” Aziraphale said, politely removing his hand from underneath Anathema’s. “I may not have my flaming sword but I can handle a few low level demons. I’ve done a bit of thwarting, in my day.” He puffed up like a robin. 

“I’m literally the only demon you’ve grappled with and you’ve not ONCE thwarted…” Crowley protested, but Anathema cut him off. 

“We’ll go with you!” She said. From Aziraphale’s perspective it was all very strange, Anathema speaking over herself with two extremely different voices and accents, but he was picking up on the flow of it. “I’ve got that whole ‘demonic possession super strength’ thing going on and I think we can help.”

Crowley could see, between the two of them, that he wasn’t going to win so he just gave up. He had no intention of allowing Aziraphale to go into hell, though, he just decided not to say anything out loud.

“Crowley’s not convinced.” Anathema said.

_Blast it, you heard that?_ He asked

_You think very loudly._ Anathema answered.

“But you’re right,” Anathema said aloud to Aziraphale. “I’m too tired to deal with it, I think we should go to sleep and look at it all again in the morning.”

“A good plan, dear.” Aziraphale said, patting Anathema’s hand in a fraternal kind of way. “Let’s retire.” 

Later that evening, as Aziraphale sat reading as an attempt to distract himself from the situation at hand, he heard a soft knock at the door. He removed his reading glasses cautiously and opened it just a smidge. From the way a nightgown clad Anathema stood, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe in a very cool way, he could tell immediately that it was Crowley. 

“Hello love.” Aziraphale whispered, heart filled to bursting.

“She’s asleep.” Crowley said. “I’m sleepwalking her, or something.” 

“If this were an exorcism film this would be when you’d make her bite all the chickens throats out or draw an inverted cross, yes?” Aziraphale asked.

“This isn’t funny, Angel!” Crowley hissed. 

“I know.” Aziraphale took a slow breath. “I’m just so glad you’re here. I thought… you know. I thought for a moment that you’d really gone.” 

Crowley sighed. 

“I thought so too, for a minute.” He absently smoothed Anathema’s nightgown. “You can’t go to hell tomorrow. They’ve got me in this torture chamber, they’ve probably had mad dogs rip my body to pieces already, it’s just not worth it.”

“I’ve seen worse.” Aziraphale said, voice unusually firm. “What, are you trying to protect me? Do you remember the plagues Crowley? Do you remember Egypt?” Crowley raised his eyebrows. Aziraphale never brought up Egypt. Even Crowley had known not to say anything to him after that particularly blood soaked episode. And then to watch so many of the freed Israelites die, it had all been too horrible. “I promise you.” Aziraphale said, any of his usual flippancy gone. “I can handle it.” 

“I just… I don’t like for you to see me like that. With the other demons.” Crowley looked miserable. 

“Crowley.” Aziraphale took Anathema’s hand in his and squeezed it. “I know what you are. I’m not ashamed of you or afraid of you. I’m so sorry if I ever make you feel foul or rotten. You aren’t. You’re you and I love you.”

“Except for right now.” Crowley said. “When I’m sort of also another person.”

“Yes, that bit I could definitely do without.” Aziraphale said with a laugh, dropping Anathema’s hand and shaking it all out with a shiver. 

Crowley laughed. 

“I’m going to take the girl and me back to bed. I just needed to talk it out for a moment.”

“I love you, Crowley. We’ll make all of this right, tomorrow.” Aziraphale said.

“I hope we can.” Crowley muttered, voice anything but sure.


	5. Toodle-oo!

The next morning Anathema/Crowley and Aziraphale sat rather primly next to one another on the bus, not making small talk. Aziraphale had had the forsight not to wear his armor of heaven on public transit; the other passengers on the bus did not give him a second glance. Anathema looked largely the same as she usually did, the only hint that she was at the moment possessed by a demon came from her slightly more black than usual outfit choice. The outdoorsy and pleasant scent of sage infused the air around her, as she had filled every pocket of her jacket and trousers with the herb. Crowley didn’t have the heart to tell her that sage was going to have about as much impact in hell as throwing a wooden chopstick at a dartboard.

They were on their way to Crowley’s flat, to pick up the Bentley. Their planned entrance to hell was on the other side of town, and Crowley preferred to have a quick means of escape waiting for them when and if they departed the underworld.

Crowley’s strategy when it came to demonic possession was to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. He’d possessed some Christian radicals in the 1750s who actually complimented him on his etiquette afterwards, shortly before they were burned at the stake. He chose to let Anathema take control over most automatic things, walking, talking, etc, only piping up when he felt it absolutely necessary. He thought it was all going rather well actually, despite a few slip-ups where his normal walking stride took over Anathema’s and she found herself astonished at the things her hips were doing. 

But climbing down the steps of the bus near his flat, Anathema’s body tensed up in shock. Her heart began to pound, and for a moment her vision blurred. Crowley had to take over to avoid them both running right into a street sign. 

“Dear? What’s wrong?” Aziraphale asked, sensing Anathema’s discomfort at once.

_IT’S HIM._ Anathema thought, unable to shift her gaze from one dark haired man at the end of the street.

_Who’s him?_ Crowley asked, trying to figure out what was making Anathema’s knees tremble and palms sweat. 

_NEWT!_ She thought, finally breaking the gaze and staring down at her shoes, flushing pink.

And at that Crowley finally remembered him, the tall, pale, odd looking fellow with whom Book Girl had showed up at the end of days. He at the moment stood at the street corner with a fishlike blank expression, ineptly swiping the face of his smart phone as though it was a bomb that might go off at any moment. 

_He’s going to see me! What do I do!?_ Anathema thought, panicked. 

Crowley had of course avoided going into any part of Anathema’s mind in which he was uninvited, but suddenly he found himself standing in the middle of her memory of their breakup. He stood in a nice warm woollen skirt (he had several similar to it at home), in a very quaint kitchen in what he could only imagine was lower Tadfield, staring daggers at the odd young man on the other side of the room. A pot of oatmeal sat in the kitchen sink, as yet unwashed.

“You’re always telling me I need to be tougher! More manly!” The Newt man was shouting, looking much more riled up than Crowley had ever seen him. “I’m never enough for you!”

“More MANLY?” Anathema asked, shaking her head in disbelief. Crowley could feel her disgust. After two years, hundreds of hours of conversation, Newt somehow knew her so little as to think she wanted him to be more traditionally MASCULINE? It was mind boggling. Crowley felt himself getting worked up as well. “Newt. It’s over.” She said. 

“No, it’s not.” Newt replied, with irritating confidence.

“Yes it is.” Anathema repeated.

“Think about it.” He almost smirked. “Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?”

“Well I might have had an idea about that if you didn’t tell me to BURN MY FAMILY BOOK OF PROPHECIES!”

“Don’t you DARE put that on me, you AGREED!” Newt snapped. He looked much less fishlike when he was upset. Crowley didn’t really think it was an improvement. 

“Well you know what?” Anathema said. “Wherever the fuck I’m going, it’s somewhere you aren’t, and that’s GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.” 

Crowley, if he had been inhabiting his own corporeal form, would have let out a low impressed whistle at that, possibly accompanied by a few approving snaps. At once both of them were back in the present, Anathema too upset to think clearly, barely keeping anything together in her state of social panic. 

_Anathema, love, do you mind if I take the wheel for a moment?_ Crowley asked politely.

_God, go for it._ Anathema thought, delighted to be able to step out of the situation at hand. 

Crowley took full control of Anathema’s body, and immediately turned around to face Newt with a dramatic flourish. 

“OY! TOSSER!” Crowley shouted, making a point to use Anathema’s voice so that Newt would think she was the one addressing him. 

Newt looked up, confused. His phone had started to make an odd whirring noise that was actually impossible for a smartphone to make. There wasn’t any kind of fan mechanism to make such a noise. He froze when he saw Anathema shouting at him. 

Despite the feminine voice, Aziraphale knew right away that Crowley was the one in charge. His grasp of what was going on was tenuous at best, so he simply gave Newt a little wave as though Anathama had just wished him a polite “good morning!” He didn’t know what was going on but he was supportive of the general concept. 

Crowley, as Anathema, grabbed Aziraphale’s lapels and pulled him down into a rough kiss. Aziraphale froze up, but Crowley did his cute little thing where he ran his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck which always just sent him, so the angel found himself kissing back more than he would ever expect. 

Newt stood staring, mouth agape, trying to think of any possible explanation as to why his ex girlfriend was standing in the middle of London making out with someone he KNEW to be an actual angel. She pulled back and made a rude English gesture at him, complete with a raspberry noise, and then sprinted off. The angel made an apologetic and very confused wave and then hurried after her. Newt could only be described as flabbergasted.

“Oh my God.” Anathema muttered as she ran away, Crowley hiding back into her subconscious.

“I’m not entirely sure what you expected to accomplish with that, Crowley.” Aziraphale asked through gasping breaths as they rounded the corner of Crowley’s building.

“No, it was perfect!” Anathema laughed out loud. “He’s gonna be so pissed!” 

“It seemed like the right thing to do in the moment.” Crowley said, smiling up at his angel, who flushed a bit. 

“That’s fine, but, please don’t do it again.” 

By then the three of them had arrived at the Bentley, parked in its usual spot, covered in parking tickets. Aziraphale flicked his hands and they all burnt up, and Crowley gave him his usual grateful nod. 

Sinking into the driver’s seat, Crowley found his legs about 15 centimeters too short to reach the pedals. 

“Sorry.” Anathema apologized, looking around for a way to adjust the seats like you would in a rental car. 

“No need.” Crowley said, willing the car to start. He craned Anathema’s neck to get a look out of the windshield. “All clear?” He asked Aziraphale.

“Well…” 

“Good enough for me!” Crowley peeled out of the parking spot, miraculously avoiding a collision with the mother pushing two young toddlers in a pram directly in front of them. 

“Oh god!” Anathema shouted.

“You should probably let me handle this!” Crowley said, pushing his way back in control of the vehicle.

“He’s just like this when he drives, I’m terribly sorry.” Aziraphale said, holding on to the handle by the door for dear life. 

~*~

Crowley’s lifeless corporeal form lay, as it had for the past 12 hours, slumped against the slimy and bloodstained office wall of one of Hell’s deepest dungeons. Hastur squinted at it suspiciously through the smudged, bulletproof glass window of the door.

“He’s really committing to that whole, dead thing, isn’t he?” He asked the demonic frog that sat atop his head. The frog made a little belching noise. That was all the frog ever did. Hastur liked his frog, and he didn’t like very much of anything.

It wasn’t like Crowley to just give up and lie perfectly limp for multiple hours. He was always planning something incomprehensible with his cool hair and his cool cars and what have you. Hastur narrowed his black eyes even further, trying to figure out what the prone body could possibly be playing at. 

“Excuse me.” A female voice asked from Hastur’s side. “We need to get into that room.” 

Hastur glanced down in shock at what could only be a human woman, dressed in black, speaking with a kind of American accent, and staring up politely. 

“W-What?” He sputtered, taking a step back. “How did you?” He tilted his head. “Are you two people?” 

“BACK! DEMON!” A loud, booming voice with a southern English accent addressed Hastur from behind. The demon spun around to see a blinding glowing light, the kind of light which showed that an angel really meant business, and hissed at it.

Anathema muttered a few incantations as Hastur backed away from Aziraphale’s lightshow. Usually this was the hex you would use to banish a demon back into the netherworld, but as they happened to be IN the netherworld at that moment, she had specified it to just send him to a different part of it. It was an oddly specific spell, and when Hastur disappeared from their presence with a loud POP she hoped that it had actually worked and he hadn’t just materialized in the middle of a Tesco or something.

“Oh, well done Anathema!” Aziraphale said, dimming his light and stepping forward. She hadn’t quite got used to him in the full armor yet. It was just so…. golden. And shiny. It looked like something designed by Michaelangelo.

“I’m in there, I’m positive.” Crowley said, wrinkling Anathema’s nose. “I remember the stink.” 

“We’ll have you out in a tick, love.” Aziraphale said, pulling a small vial of liquid out from a satchel. “Stand back!” He announced, with drama.

“Is that?” But before Crowley could ask, Aziraphale, with an embellished motion, poured the contents of the vial over the hardware on the door. 

Nothing happened, although Crowley jumped a few steps back from the water seeping down the doorframe. Aziraphale frowned.

“Was that holy water?!?” Crowley snapped.

“Of course!” Aziraphale tugged on the door like someone trying to walk into a department store after closing hours. It didn’t budge. “Why didn’t the lock melt, though?” 

“Because it’s a LOCK!” Crowley hissed. “IT’S NOT EVIL!”

“It’s in hell isn’t it?” Aziraphale protested.

“Not because of anything it DID!” Crowley couldn’t believe that this had been Aziraphale’s plan.

“Alohamora.” Said Anathema. Nothing happened. Both Crowley and Aziraphale stared at her without comprehension. “Sorry. That was a joke.” She said with a little smile. 

“Did we just sneak our way into the deepest dungeons of hell and now we can’t get past a DOOR?” Crowley asked, staring in at his own lifeless body. He couldn’t believe he’d let his hair get that disheveled. Dead or not, no excuse.

“In hindsight perhaps I should have got the key from Hastur before we exiled him.” Aziraphale muttered. 

“Blimey.” Crowley considered just kicking the door in, but now that it was soaked in holy water he didn’t want to risk getting near it. 

At that moment, a large, broad shouldered, demon with a face like a ringworm appeared at the end of the long, filthy corridor. 

It let out an unearthly yell. 

Aziraphale decided that brute force was just going to have to be the theme of the day and kicked the door, right above the lock, with all of his angelic might. 

Hell, for all of its unnecessary bureaucratic infrastructure, really didn’t do a great job keeping its facilities top of the line, and with a wet groan the whole door gave way and collapsed into the cell. Anathema jumped over the remains and rushed across the room, picking up the cold, lifeless hands of Crowley’s physical form into her own warm, living ones. Behind her, the tv screen fuzzed with glitchy white noise.

_What do we do? Is there a spell?_ She thought frantically at Crowley.

_Just peel my eyes open._

Crowley’s head had lolled so far forward Anathema worried about the state of his neck. But with the loud clashes of Aziraphale’s sword ringing out outside the room she lifted up Crowley’s face and peeled his eyelids back with her thumbs. His snake pupils had sunk back into his head a bit, and looked clouded, like they were under cataracts.

_What do I do?_ She asked again, frantically, but Crowley took over. It was difficult to move from one physical form to another, but while she held his eyes open and stared into them he was able to sink through her form back into his own with a concentrated effort of will. 

“Ha! Take that! Beast!” Aziraphale bellowed outside, and the demon screeched in response.

Crowley, melting back into his corporeal form, felt a painful needling tingle sensation all over his body. His first movement was a kind of jolting shiver. 

“Is this going to be like the Princess Bride?” Anathema asked. “Do you need a minute to warm up?” 

“No.” Crowley groaned, happy to have enough space to stretch his legs a bit again. “I’ve got it.” He tried to stand up but the cold metal at his wrists and ankles held him fast. “Oh blast it, I forgot.” He muttered.

“Aziraphale!” Anathema shouted. “Get the keys!”

“Just… one… minute…!” Aziraphale muttered, still clanging away against the demonic guard. He was holding his own but apparently the two were better matched than he thought. 

“Hold on!” Anathema, left Crowley to his chains and hurried into the hallway, digging her hands through her pockets. “Hey! Demon… guy!” She shouted. The pale, larva-like creature turned around with a wet noise. Triumphantly, she pulled out a handful of sage, lighting the end of it and thrusting it towards his face with gusto. 

Aziraphale watched in horror as the ruthless demonic presence began to move towards the grinning witch. 

“Bad spirit, begone!” She shouted, throwing the crumpled but still fragrant sage at the monster. 

Sage isn’t exactly aerodynamic, but where a few of the bits of the dried herb touched the wormish gray skin of the guard they let out a sizzling hiss (that’s right, fuckers, sage works!). The demon recoiled in pain. 

“GET HIM!” She shouted. 

Aziraphale, remembering that he too was in this fight, slammed the butt of his sword into the area which most resembled the base of the demon’s skull, knocking the thing out cold. 

“What’s going on out there?!” Crowley shouted.

“We’ve only just bested a demon in combat!” Aziraphale shouted, with unwarriorlike delight.

“We got it!” Anathema announced, wasting no time in digging around for the long ring of keys, trying to separate them from where they were clipped at the guard’s hip. 

“Anathema threw some kind of herb at it and it went down!” Aziraphale said, stepping into the cell and smiling warmly at the now moving form of Crowley. “What is it with demons and seasonings?” He asked.

“I have no idea what you’re on about.” Crowley muttered, but Anathema jumped into the room after Aziraphale gripping a rusted keyring that held about 800 large, oddly shaped keys. Some of them appeared to be made of bone shards. 

“One of these should work!” She said in a bright tone, crouching down and attempting to fit the first key into Crowley’s wrist shackles. Aziraphale couldn’t stop gazing adoringly at Crowley. He knelt down and lightly touched the side of his demon’s face.

“Are you all right?” He asked. 

Crowley attempted to stretch from his oddly contorted position, bones audibly popping back into place in his spine as he did so.

“Not remotely.” He muttered, but he nuzzled ever so slightly into the proffered hand. Aziraphale cupped Crowley’s face, then, gazing with such empathy and kindness at his friend that Crowley almost couldn’t stand it. Not like this. Not here. How could such a beautiful creature exist in such a place?

“What is going on!?!”

The three of them all jumped and turned their attention to the entrance of the cell. Hastur stood alongside Beelzebub, arms crossed, frog atop his head glaring at the three outsiders in stern disapproval. 

“You can’t stop us!” Crowley lied, voice sounding a bit haggard after its long disuse. “This was my plan all along!”

Aziraphale stood up, sword in hand, glancing between the duke of hell and Beelzebub. 

Beelzebub could not look less impressed.

“You’re that fat angel from the end of days.” They dismissively noted. “How’d you get here? I wonder?” 

“Your side can’t stop us.” Aziraphale said, pointing his sword at the short, diseased figure. “We go where we like.” 

“That one keeps saying he’s not on our side anymore.” Beelzebub said, eyeing Crowley, still chained to the wall. “Sounds like you’re still loyal, though. Which again, begs the question, what are you doing here?” Beelzebub glanced over at Anathema. “With an innocent?” 

Anathema bristled a bit at being addressed as an innocent. How much witchcraft and premarital sex did it take to get damned, these days? 

“She volunteered!” Aziraphale sputtered.

“Don’t listen to them, Aziraphale, they’re being wily!” Crowley hissed, trying to twist his wrists out of the chains and nearly breaking the skin. 

“A living human shouldn’t be down here.” Beelzebub stared at Anathema like a hungry dog eying a piece of raw meat. “They shouldn’t be exposed to such things.” 

Aziraphale stood firm with his sword, but his expression was very much stricken. Poor Anathema! He’d been so concerned about rescuing Crowley he hadn’t even thought about what seeing hell might do to a normal human mind.

“It’s all trickery, Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted.

“Totally!” Anathema stood up, brushing some of the dirt and grime off of her dress. “I’m fine! Don’t let them get to you!” 

“Humans have such a limited view of the universe, can you trust her to volunteer knowingly? To make such a choice?” Beelzebub asked, looking at a Aziraphale with an expression of faux sympathy. Their tone shifted. “Crowley belongs down here. With us.” 

Hastur, for the record, had no idea what was going on. He was a good old fashioned follow orders and bust skulls type of demon, the whole mind games thing had always struck him as dubious. He kept an eye on Crowley. He didn’t like the way the skinny prick was wiggling about back there. 

“Crowley…” Aziraphale turned his attention away from Anathema and glared back at Beelzebub. “Crowley belongs with me.” 

“Crowley belongs down here and you know it.” Beelzebub scoffed.

Crowley, whose thumbs both nearly popped out of their sockets as he tried to twist his arms loose, had moment of epiphany.

Arms, at this point, were very much a problem. Best to get rid of them. He closed his eyes and focused. Strangely, it was easier to do it down here, all the old hellish memories came back more clearly. He mentally pictured his first earthly form. Smaller. More flexible. Considerably worse style. 

The sensation of transforming into a snake is not one of the more relatable experiences to describe to a human. If someone forced Crowley to describe it he would have said it was like stretching every muscle in your body so long and so tightly that everything unnecessary just sort of fused together. Except ribs, which sort of grindingly multiplied. It wasn’t an altogether pleasant sensation. 

Aziraphale, not noticing the rearranging of bones and flesh happening behind him, lowered his sword somewhat, expression softening. He gazed at Beelzebub with genuine sympathy.

“You really don’t understand? Do you?” He asked. “Crowley doesn’t belong here. No-one belongs here. And humans make choices all the time, they’re not always good at it, but that’s the whole point!” 

“HE’S DOING IT AGAIN! HE’S DOING SOMETHING!” Hastur began to wheeze, pointing at the back of the room. 

But it was too late, Crowley, (or should I say Crawly?), in the form of a large black snake, slithered out of his chains easily and began to wrap around Aziraphale’s golden clad ankle. 

“Stop them!” Beelzebub ordered.

“NO!” Aziraphale shouted, no longer fretful, suddenly standing firm, something like a glowing beacon in the pits of hell. His huge white wings unfurled behind him splendidly, burning up the muck and filth of their surroundings, somehow sanitizing the cell itself. Beelzebub raised an arm to protect their face and retreated backwards. Hastur just shrieked non-stop throughout the whole scene. 

“Crowley.” Aziraphale said, glowing brightly and beautifully. “Belongs with me.” 

Aziraphale held his hand out to Anathama, who grasped his whole arm firmly. Anathema found his glow to be warm and welcoming. To Beelzebub and Hastur, however, it seemed to burn. 

Can we, erm, get on with it? Crowley thought at Aziraphale.

Yes, love, of course, sorry! Aziraphale was sure he was supposed to say something memorable and dramatic as he lifted them all out of hell, but at the moment the best he could do was,

“TOODLE-OO!” 

And with that the three of them vanished in a flash of blinding light, leaving behind a burned clean jail cell and two furious but helpless agents of hell.

~*~ONE WEEK LATER~*~

Aziraphale, like a gentleman, offered his hand to help Anathema step out of the Bentley in the drop-off zone at Heathrow Airport. Crowley pulled her things out of the boot. A stern looking guard standing next to the drop-off zone began to walk forward to tell the two men that they weren’t allowed to step out of their vehicle like that, but Aziraphale snapped his fingers and the guard became too distracted by a sparrow flying overhead to pay any further attention to the rule-breakers. 

“If your flight is canceled, or anything goes wrong, just know you’re more than welcome to stay at the shop for a few more nights.” Aziraphale said, helping Anathema adjust her backpack over her shoulders. 

“I know, and I appreciate it.” Anathema said with a smile, extending the handle of her rolling suitcase. “You’ve been so unbelievably generous! I’m amazed you didn’t just leave me in hell when you had the chance!” 

Crowley smiled guiltily at that while Aziraphale looked absolutely stricken at the suggestion. At the sight of Aziraphale’s discomfort Crowley wrapped a comforting arm around his partner’s waist, and Aziraphale leaned into him. 

“Have a safe and blessed journey.” Aziraphale said, with a true comforting warmth.

“Safe travels.” Crowley added. 

Anathema took a deep breath and looked over at the entrance to the airport. Every crowd of people who passed through the doors took their first steps into the unknown. The future spread before her, vast and blank, and for a moment Anathema felt too overwhelmed to move.

Crowley’s hand on her shoulder jolted her back into reality.

“It gets easier, yeah?” He said softly. 

Anathema nodded, and forced herself to smile, adjusting her glasses determinedly as she faced the door.

“Remember to send my bicycle along, right? I left you the address?” She called out as she walked away from them.

“Of course!” Aziraphale answered. “We’ll ship it just as soon as we can!” 

Crowley knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Aziraphale was going to completely forget to mail the bicycle. He made a mental note to do it for him in a week. 

They both watched, like proud godfathers, as Anathema walked boldly into Heathrow. 

Crowley kissed Aziraphale’s cheek fondly “Where to now, angel?” 

Aziraphale glanced up at Crowley with a glint in his eye. For a moment, Crowley thought his angel was going to suggest they rush home to the bookshop and, well, get on with it. But then he remembered where they were. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, right above his sunglasses.

“You want to go to that sushi place again, don’t you?” He asked in a resigned tone.

Aziraphale flashed a bright, tempting smile. 

“Not just sushi! It’s the ONLY place in London with PERFECT kushiyaki!” Aziraphale looked transported just at the thought of it. 

“I don’t know what that means, but you’ve talked me into it.” 

Aziraphale resisted saying it aloud, but his expression and body language somehow articulated the words “OOH GOODY!” He made doe eyes at Crowley.

“Really? Here? Aren’t you afraid someone will see?” Crowley teased.

“Oh stop it,” Aziraphale pulled Crowley in and gave him an affectionate kiss on the lips, right in the middle of the crowded airport drop-off zone. No one looked twice. Crowley smiled and kissed him again. 

“You sure you want to stop for sushi?” Crowley asked, softly.

Aziraphale smiled, pausing as though he was considering it. 

“Yes. BUT! We have the WHOLE bookshop to ourselves when we get home, let me remind you.” 

Crowley laughed and put his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders as they turned back to the car.

“What was it you said that one time? ‘Temptation accomplished!’”

“Oh shut up!” Aziraphale laughed, and the two of them, laughing and chatting, set off for their lunch date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING! I hope you had 1/12th as much fun reading this as I had writing it. Thank you thank you thank you.


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